Shopper Marketing - September 2017 - 46
PEOPLE TO WATCH O ut of college, Kristin Secora started working at General Mills in a sales function, not yet convinced marketing was the path she wanted to take. But then she met Erin Mott (a marketing manager there at the time), learned about brand and P&L management, and realized that marketing was what she wanted to do in the long term. "She opened my eyes to the possibility of what was out there and taught me so much as well, both in terms of financials and analytics and also how to move fast and get things done quickly but still do any job very accurately," Secora says of Mott. While doing rotations in marketing, Secora started going to school part time to earn her MBA, a deliberate decision, she says, because she didn't want to miss out on the experiences she could be getting in the workforce. Still in school, she transitioned to Polaris Industries, a manufacturer of snowmobiles and ATVs, in 2014. There she was charged with bringing the brand back to life. "All my work at General Mills and my education really helped me to be able to [pull] back the brand and start over again." Looking back, she admits to knowing very little about the powersports industry, but she jumped in and learned 46 y SHOPPER MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2017